The "How to Format" panel on the right shows some ways of formatting text, what is all that about? And does that have anything to do with something called Markdown?
The "How to Format" panel on the right shows some ways of formatting text, what is all that about? And does that have anything to do with something called Markdown?
Yes, the formatting is based on Markdown, an actually pretty simple way to format text. When you compose text here, a preview of it is shown below the edit pane already. Here's a quick demo on Markdown:
italic, another italic, bold, both, strikethough
A. Item A
B. Item B
We can also link websites, such as the link of this forum. Or if it is an online image, we can add a ! in front.

If you want blocky (i.e. monospaced) characters that look like code, use back ticks like this.
But if you need a whole code block, start and end the block with three backticks:
# Comments work too!
curl wttr.in # This checks the weather in your terminal!
This is great for making text copy-able.
Yes, we can do tables too, well, just a simple one:
| Feature | Symbol |
|---|---|
| bold | ** |
| italic | * or _ |
This is a quote, great for making a point.